Whatever You Desire Most
by AEM77
Summary: Audrey is gone, but Nathan's still troubled.
1. Chapter 1

Nathan stomps back towards his office, coffee mug in hand. It is a rare sight to see the Chief at the coffee machine these days, or out of his office really, and all of the officers in the bullpen track his movement out of the corner of their eyes. Since Audrey disappeared into thin air nearly 10 months ago he'd stopped drinking coffee. The painful memory of fingers grazing his hand to take his mug and the warm smile given with its return much more of an incentive for the lifestyle change than the burned tongue he can't feel.

But today's caseload compiled with another sleepless night going over the notes he'd found in Audrey's apartment are beginning to take their toll. Not for the first time he's spent a good part of the morning in the futile exercise of wishing Audrey were with him. For the first few months after the meteor shower hit, he could only think of how she'd taken the best parts of him with her when she left Haven. It isn't until now, much later, when the acute despair has mellowed into a dull but constant ache, that he's had the much more pragmatic realization that she'd also taken her intuition and special knack with the Troubled residents of the town as well. For while the barn took everything that mattered to Nathan with it when it vanished, it had left the Troubles behind.

Most of the time Nathan tells himself that he keeps going day in and day out for Audrey, vows to spend the next 26 years working to have more information for her next incarnation so that it can be her last. But when exhaustion robs his bravado and he's forced to be honest, he knows this isn't true. He failed to keep her safe, to help her escape this random horrible fate that'd been thrown upon her and he'll fail again the next time as well. Because he'd given it his absolute all last time and it had not been enough. To try to succeed without her, his version of her anyhow, next time when he'd failed with her beside him was foolishness. It would be for someone else, 27 years his junior, to be the hero of this warped and sadistic fairytale, someone made of stronger stuff than the hollow shell and shattered core that make up Nathan Wuornos. When he is feeling particularly sorry for himself he tries to imagine what his replacement will look like.

He keeps going, not for her, but because he doesn't know what else to do. He is in a holding pattern of grief and loss and loneliness that has him immobilized. Because what do you do when your world disappears? He's an actor in the middle of a play who suddenly finds himself exposed and disoriented in the street, no sign of stage or scenery. Without Duke around and even the mention of the name 'Audrey Parker' taboo to most in Haven, he sometimes wonders if it weren't all a fantastic dream, a story to tell himself to escape the literal and figurative senselessness of his existence.

He's staring into the empty space between his desk and the office door lost in thought when suddenly it is filled with a figure. It takes a moment for his mind to register the intrusion before he raises his eyes to find Audrey standing before him, hair still blond and eyes still blue. His body reacts and he's around his desk a step away from her with his heart in his throat and tears in his eyes before he's even registered a miracle has taken place.

"Hey," she says shyly her eyes drifting from his own to her hands clasped in front of her.

"Audrey," he says his voice barely a whisper. "How…?" He trails off not knowing how to even begin to articulate the wonder and salvation he feels at seeing her again. Instead of trying, he reaches across the small space between them intending to take her hand in his own. Handholding had always spoke volumes between them when their own fractured egos were reluctant to use words.

But even as he is preparing himself for the long forgotten sensation of touch, she turns away from him towards the door distracted by Stan who comes barreling into the office with his service weapon raised in one arm and shading his eyes with the other. His momentum drives him directly into Audrey who topples to the floor beneath him.

"What the hell, Stan?" Nathan asks in confusion looking back at Stan while kneeling down to tend to Audrey who's lying prone on the floor. "What the hell?" He asks again in utter bewilderment as he sees the ebony tresses of the figure currently rising to her hands and knees.

"Don't look into her eyes!" Stan cries wildly still waving his weapon blindly in front of him, "She's troubled. She'll look like whatever you desire most, been causing pandemonium on Main Street all morning," he explains finally peeking between fingers to realize the woman in question hasn't turned her gaze on them.

"I didn't mean to," a voice decidedly not Audrey's all but sobs. "Please help," she manages to choke out still huddled in a ball on the office floor.

"Take her to lock down for now," Nathan hears his own voice saying. "We'll figure this out soon ma'am."

As the office door shuts behind them, Nathan closes his eyes tightly and reaches his hand out before him into to the empty space.


	2. Chapter 2

He moves through the station towards the holding cell nervously rubbing his thumb along the long skeleton key in his palm. This is a stupid idea, he knows, but he is powerless to stop himself. When he sees her, she is seated on a bench hunched in upon herself, pressing her body against the wall, her back to the bars. She looks old and broken and he finds it difficult to believe that this woman will shortly be transformed into a living embodiment of the most tender part of his soul.

'This is a bad idea', but even as he thinks the thought his hand is moving the key towards the lock and he's clearing his throat to announce his arrival.

The woman turns to look at the intrusion and just like that she is there again and his heart begins to clench painfully in his chest, beating rapidly and weak.

"Yes?" she asks. And the likeness is so complete that it is only the confusion in her eyes and how she looks at him unknowingly that grounds him to reality. 'She isn't here. She'll never be here again', he reminds himself.

"I'm sorry," he begins taking a seat on the bench opposite her. He means to say 'I'm sorry to disturb you', but now that he's begun and she is looking at him with the same face that haunts his sleeping and waking hours, he is losing himself in this bizarre delusion. "I'm so, so, sorry," he continues bringing his face into his hands as his elbows rest on his knees.

He wants to continue now, to say the things she'll never have a chance to hear. How he's sorry for not protecting her when she needed him most, for the time they won't have together. How he thought she'd have a lifetime on this earth, not just a mere matter of moments. How those moments with her are the only that will ever matter to him. But instead he just sits there muttering into his hands, "I'm sorry".

"Dwight." The call of his name pulls him from his misery and he looks up to find Nathan standing in the doorway of the cell, one hand raised to his eyes shielding his view of the other bench. He stands wordlessly, feeling ashamed and exhausted somehow after his brief minutes in the cell.

He looks hesitantly at Nathan as he exits intending to give some explanation or apology for his behavior. But the look of utter understanding he finds in the other man's eyes stills the words in his throat. Later they will bolster each other up, see one another as the whole, solid, strong men their town needs. But for right now, he thinks, they see each other for what they really are. Two broken ghosts, moving through this world with their souls in another far from reach.


End file.
